


Home (Keep Running Till You're There)

by blackravenswing



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2514896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackravenswing/pseuds/blackravenswing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What if home is not a place?<br/>What if home is not there to be found?<br/>What if home is a soul that is haunting you?<br/>Home… Keep running till you're there…"<br/>~ Dotan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home (Keep Running Till You're There)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [todreaminscarlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/todreaminscarlet/gifts).



This is where it ends.

( _not so differently from how it had begun_ )

With two gaunt, guarded people standing at a dropship door.

 

Their breaths echo within the cavern of an abandoned hull; a graveyard that once carried them to Earth. Fire and rain have finally caught their teeth in the ancient metal of the spaceship, ash and rust making a mockery of what they had once called 'safety'; careless for the history, the _sanctity_ of this forsaken place. After weathering centuries and all the nebulous fury of the stars, it has existed mere months on this planet before crumbling back to dust and iron.

_Much like them._

They rose in unison, and to such unexpected heights. (All the more bitter is the fall.)

 

How damnably poetic that they should revert to ashes together.

 

* * *

 

It's been months since she awoke beneath the ground of Mt Weather, days since she escaped its clutches in victory, and she is weary to her bones; her hands chipped and the river of blood almost tasteless against her tongue now.

It was harder than it should have been. (The hardest thing she's ever done.) Rescuing a people who did not want to be saved. Dante bound them up in gilded words, sowing doubt with age-old tales of powerful women turned to madness... Her warnings were a figment of her trauma, her relentless terror, that's what he said. And what followed was for her safety, for all their safety... It helped them turn a blindness, but in truth they picked their side long before he wooed them. That need for 'home', it seemed, was just too strong.

She is different now though. Nothing will ever mask or sweet talk this girl into the shadows again. There is no denying anything about her; she is irrefutable, and yet, without a flicker of fight left in her veins.

 

* * *

 

When the world shows you no mercy you learn to rule it at its game. Morality, she swiftly learned, will only leave you rotting in the ground. And she got them out. Eventually. Dragged them screaming from the underworld and into the bleeding light. They saw things differently with the break of day. _O_ _f course._ They even sing her praises now.

 _Oh how hard she fought_. A _hero of old. Gilded in legend._

How little she cares for their humbled apologies. She holds her lips together when she smiles, concealing snapping jaws and hardened fangs. _These teeth..._ Oh these teeth. They have tasted the pitiless blood of necessity. They have gleamed like knives as she howled, lonely at an unseen moon; as one by one they turned their backs on her.

There is nothing that will take away their sharpness now. Some things require more than freedom to wipe away.

Memories, for instance.

And betrayal.

This ending is less than bittersweet. It is simply bitter... and disappointing.

 

* * *

 

 _Home_.

The place one lives.

It's more than that though... it's a symbol. A  _yearning._ An idealistic nirvana that grants strength to lost princesses locked away in hell. It drew her on, kept her going. What irony, that the one place she had conceived of as a sanctuary became a prison she sought so desperately to escape.

 _Home... Keep running till you're there_...

She always felt such certainty that she would know it if only she broke the mountain. Hoped perhaps, that she would find it when she saw her mother alive on Earth.

(The first of many ghosts to resurrect before her eyes).

But it turns out that homes can be tainted, can be  _haunted -_ by deceptions and by bad blood. Life with Abigail Griffin could never be a resting place again, as much as both mother and daughter might wish it. 

Finn followed, scarred, and yet still breathing; but their meeting felt more like a closure than a new beginning. He grasped her hands tightly, with a careful distance to the relief behind his smile. She felt the tug in her chest... and it leapt both ways. He did not press for her trust again and she was grateful in his understanding of how this new world worked.

The final question was the hardest; the dance of forming a name while trying not to hope too hard.

 _Do such uncommon mercies come in threes_?

'Bellamy?'

It was without hope. Surely. Yet Finn nodded without hesitation and threw the message down the line.

'Get Blake up here.'

Blake. Bellamy.

She had settled a war that day, lead an exodus, walked miles upon miles with too many ghosts shackled to her back, and her knees were ready to buckle... but she locked them firm. She was not there, not quite yet. 

He exploded from the forest on her blind side, leading with her name.

'Clarke.'

It seemed a stumbling block over which they both froze. An unbreachable silence of painful impossibility; her existence to him, his existence to her. 

It was not jubilant, or desperate, or anything else you might expect. 

It was an answer

(to an endless question).

A ragged truth.

An _ending_

(and one that had come only just in time).

The balance tipped and they collided - just a beat too soon - like the nuclei of two elements fusing to ignite a star. It surprised her how much he meant; the howl and collide of it, the push and the pull of him. She should have known, but it takes some time to realise; of all the voices in her head beneath the mountain, his was the only one she'd ever understood. And the thought first struck in the echo of that moment, a whisper ignited upon the amplifier of pulse, so near her own.

_The only one I trust is you._

 

It was only when she'd truly made it, walking the perimeters of Camp Jaha with the knowledge that every living member of her society was there inside, that she realised she had no idea what she'd been chasing. That it remained elusive. Whatever home was, this wasn't it. (She knew it by its absence). This patched together conglomerate of tainted, trust-less people - this is not what she had fought so hard to reclaim.

And the doubt creeps in.

_What if home is not here to be found?_

 

* * *

 

The circles of distance widen over the coming days, measured between herself and this resting place she did not choose. Bellamy tracks her to the hollow space that her steps always lead to - the ruined dropship, the charcoal campsite - finds her kneeling on the metal floor ensnared within a pentagram of shattered chalk.

There's coloured dust between her fingers, grass-blade green and red-desert brown. A streak of winter sky shadows her cheek, memorialising the hurried swipe of a palm beneath her eyes.

'Did you follow me here?'

He shrugs. Doesn't tell her how often he visits this place. Doesn't tell her why.

_This is where they'll come back._

'It's a free country,' and he likes the way his teeth shatter on the lie, a fracture of resistance. 'A man can walk for miles on the whim of his own direction... as long as he has the stomach for a lashing when he returns. So is the rule of Vice Chancellor Kane.'

She remembers the moment he told her, _'my voice counts for less than nothing in this camp_ '. It was the moment in which she realised that just as she had fallen, so had he.

What is a princess without the will of her people?

All too similar to a general that has been stripped of his army it would seem.

 

* * *

 

He'd gone from powerless child of station 17, to revered leader, all the way back to the start again. It was a particularly crushing defeat when you'd lived so long as an underdog. It haunted him the most because of how well the role fit, of how easily his mind slipped back into the submissive patterns of old.

'Finn and I tried to find you all,' he had recounted, guiding her through Alpha Station's halls. 'So many damn times... Scouring Grounder camps across the country... against Kane's orders of course. Eventually he revoked my weapon access entirely; consigned me to the cleaning crews putting the stations back together. It may not sound like much, but to go back to that, to be _made_ to go back to that for a second time. Kane knew. He knew what that meant to me.'

Perhaps he gave in after that.

She had understood the difference in him as soon as she was escorted into camp. The way he moved within the hierarchy; the way he moved within himself... It was only a matter of hours, after all, before he went after Jasper.

The world had taught him to be quiet in her absence, to make the sidelines and shadows his home once more and to work beyond the bounds of authorities' notice. Eyes watched their prey with the same frightful promises of old, but there was a stealth to his rage now, a weathered subtlety.

He did not roar like he used to.

'Bellamy- I.. I'm sorry,' Jasper had stammered, cornered in a disused passageway of the space station.

And Clarke had stood at the doorway and watched. The sight, the story - it was not a pretty one.

Bellamy advanced with a slowness, a frightening impassivity; unleashing his words with the measured uncoil of a whip.

'You were supposed to have her back.' His fists so rarely struck these days but they still remembered how to curl; grasping suddenly into Jasper's jacket as he enunciated the words with foreboding clarity. ' _I. Wasn't. There_. And all you had to do was _trust_ her - stars, she's earned that much from you. But you took the other side, Jordan. You took the other side over _her_. Of all people!'

'It... it... it seemed _safe_. Bellamy, man, you didn't see it. The food, the people, how were we to know? After all of this, I just- I wanted it to be safe...'

The thunder of metal walls is a war cry made for gods. Bellamy landed his fists to either side of Jasper's terrified face, startling a whimper from the boy while being oh so careful not to leave a mark: no story for the skin to tell. He knew how to cover his tracks these days, he knew how to avoid getting caught.

 _'She should never have had to fight through that alone._ ' And for one split second, the tiger's roar returned.

Jasper's eyes rolled, clinging to Clarke's presence like a child's pleading hands; beseeching her to call him off...

_The greatest threat to us, Clarke, is you._

...and she did not intervene.

 

* * *

 

Now in the wreckage of the dropship, she raises a stick of violet chalk between her fingers and watches Bellamy approach; snapping the colour into its smallest increments, sweeping together the rubble, grinding it carefully beneath her hand while he watches.

'I used to paint.'

She selects another colour, takes her time, makes sure it's right.

'When I was locked in solitary, thinking of my dad - when I couldn't _breathe_ for memories - I used to paint.'

Orange is the victim; the final gold of sunset, the ending of a day.

'He's ruined that for me. The touch of chalk... the smell of paint...' She endures a shudder that she can't contain. 'And all I see is him.'

Bellamy knows implicitly who she means. He's heard the tales of Dante Wallace and his archive of oil-painted canvasses. He understands the tremble in her rage.

Moving beside her he chooses a piece of chalk, a similar brown to Marcus Kane's eyes, and crushes it with his boot heel.

'All of them?' he questions lowly.

(It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense.)

She eyes him for the longest time, finally handing him a piece of vermillion, accepting this proposal with a steely nod.

' _All of them_.'

And would you believe, just like that, it becomes the two of them again, reducing chalk to dust in the place of memories. The survivor who's barely breathing. The warrior who can't leave the shadows. Haunting this abandoned camp where they once ruled side by side.

They are not their memories of themselves and it takes some time to adjust. But if there is one thing they understand in this world it will always be this.

It will always be each other.

 

* * *

 

They begin a pattern after that. Slipping away whenever they can, sometimes one trailing the other, but most often together. No one dares to question him with her at his side. Gradually they rediscover their kingdom.

Walking the graveyards, she comments on the number of marking stones. So he tells her of how he'd his spent days, sneaking out of camp and sifting through the ashes, searching the surrounding woods to identify every body he could claim.

It had taken nearly a week, but he'd dragged each and every one of them to this site and laid them at Wells Jaha's feet. And as he cut the shovel through the soil and peeled back the skin of the Earth, he thought perhaps he understood what drew a boy such as that to a task such as this. There was something of an ode to the work, a quiet gesture of dignity for those that had died too young and so ungraciously. It suited Wells' nature.

Bellamy followed his lead in the only offer of respect that was left for him to pay. Besides, the ground was not so hard a resting place as he had once thought. There was a fitting solemnity to the spaces he created, the soil enveloping the bodies with a reassuring finality; so different from the whirling implosion that was a funeral in space. He knew that they would not be disturbed here.

The site became something of a pilgrimage for him over the coming weeks, haunted by his fruitless searching for the 47. He wasn't the sort to bring flowers or trinkets, but he laid down a homage with the imprint of his boots. Wells' marking stone was always the last, the one at which he spent the longest time; wondering if they were more similar now; wondering why a part of him had always wanted that.

_You should have lived, Prince of the Ark._

_You would never have lost her._

 

* * *

 

It takes some time before he asks about her scars.

They are a silence she has dug into her heart like a grave, their memory its own, small kind of death. Yet she unearths it for him (and him alone). That unassuming echo of the devil's voice:

_'You must understand, Miss Griffin, that there are consequences for what you have done.'_

That breathless sting of the needle in her spine, the crushing wave of its effect a nightly visitor to her dreams. Visions had swarmed up and grasped hold before Dante Wallace had even locked the door that plunged her into days of darkness.

_Pharmacological torture._

The doctors of Mt Weather were so particularly proud of it: necessary punishment inflicted without damaging DNA, without causing physical incapacitation… just the mind as a battle ground, and then the next day, deliverable back into the system.

She can't quite tell him that she tried to rip her own throat out because she couldn't stand the screams. But as he places his fingertips to the starting points, following the scrabbling arcs from right to left, she knows her silence is not a secret with him. They have always seen the best and the worst in each other, and they have built their world - their trust - on both.

This here is the first time he kisses her, her face clutched between his hands like a prayer. And she thinks why not, why wait? _Oh_ … (They pull closer, shuddered breaths echoing together, and suddenly she's shivering, down to the loneliest reaches of her soul.) _Oh why_ haven't they tried this before? His lips find the lines across her throat, tracing them in reverse, more gently than she can imagine, like he can undo each strangled scream. To the encouragement of her sighs he moves on, pressing a whisper to every mark that he can find; laying new memories over them,  _over her._

Maybe it is only a veil, but by the stars _it helps_.

 

* * *

 

The message on the dropship wall is always the last thing she touches when she leaves; returning to the camp that is less and less a part of their lives. The grooves in the metal bite unnaturally deep, traced countless times over by Bellamy and Abby alike.

_Clarke, please come home._

_Home._

The concept continues to puzzle her. She knows that the solution is not '22km south/SW'…

Until finally, one summer afternoon, she understands it.

With unspoken agreement they started cleaning out the dropship several days ago. Next came the camp grounds, shovelling free the topography of ash that lingered from that fateful battle. Treading the uncovered earth together, they marked out the fire pits on a whim; then the campsites, then the meat-shack and the well. After much deliberation, they finally started to re-build the wall.

They never talked about why, about what it was they were even doing, but already the grass was springing back from the exposed soil, and already the world felt different. The noise of their building drew others. Miller, Raven, Monty, Monroe, Harper and Fox… even Jasper hovered uncertainly from a distance. So many faces from before. Wordlessly they began to join, hefting wood and laying markers under Clarke and Bellamy's wary gaze; repeating the dance of nearly a year ago. Perhaps what they build will last longer this time.

When the others trudge back to Camp Jaha in the evening, the dispossessed leaders stay behind, sitting side by side on the dropship ramp.

'You know they want in,' Bellamy muses tiredly. 'That's what this is about. I think it's their way of saying sorry.'

Clarke swallows down the venom that rises at the thought.

'I don't want them. I don't trust them.'

Nudging her shoulder, he smiles wryly. 'You don’t trust anyone.'

But she knows for sure that isn't true.

The planes of his face are a different kind of map from the one she tattooed upon her mind beneath the mountain, yet she does not need to study it to find her way home.

Reaching between them she takes his hand, raises the dusty palm until its level with her eyes and traces the fierce lifeline across his skin. She could smile, and it could be soft for him, but there is nothing more serious than this moment.

'I trust you. For better or for worse: _only you_.'

Once he would have shied from a weight of words like these, but there a greater things to fear in this world than his own insecurities. He knows that much by now.

And as he draws her, inexorably, across the remaining distance between them, she wonders…

_What if home is simply a soul that is haunting you?_

Because they may be just two gaunt, guarded people sitting in a graveyard, but if she had to define this feeling then that is what she'd call it.

 _Home_.

(Perhaps she can stop running now. Perhaps she's finally there.)

**Author's Note:**

> I described a simple concept to Ellie: 'two bitter, betrayed leaders who can't even rely on their own people; sitting side by side in some quiet place, and all they really trust in the world is each other', and she tempted me to write it. This was only meant to be 500 words... Now its nearly 3000 and I don't even know what's going on! But if you get anything out of it then please consider sharing your thoughts, they are always the highlight of my day <3


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